1. Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate generally to methods and apparatus providing multimedia on demand, for example, pay per view movies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional pay per view movie service providers operate in a near on demand environment. Movies are typically broadcast at periodic time intervals, of for example one hour, and a consumer wishing to view a particular movie must wait until the next showing to view the complete movie. Furthermore, if a user is distracted, perhaps by a telephone call, when the broadcast programming starts, then the user will miss a portion of the presentation. Yet another inconvenience can occur if the viewer receives a telephone call or has a visitor come to his front door during the middle of the presentation. The user may miss parts of the movie to attend to the call or to the visitor. Countless other distractions exist that can also interfere with a user's enjoyment of the pay per view movie.
It would be beneficial to users if pay per view services were provided via individual broadcasts to each user and each user were provided with a control to perform trick modes on the broadcast, but providing such individualized broadcasts to a large number of users would use up tremendous amounts of bandwidth and is thus not a practical solution. Therefore, what is needed is a video on demand system that operates in a near video on demand environment wherein the pay per view service provider offers a finite number of scheduled broadcasts, but where the user can initiate program viewing at any time and perform trick modes on the program presentation during playback viewing.